"So how do we handle Drones on the wargames table?" Topic

Just kicking a few ideas around

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Very interesting ideas, too. Thanks.

Glad you liked them, just something for people to ponder over and adapt to their taste :-)

How is a drone any different to represent than any other unit?

It has maneuverability, kinetic and non-kinetic capabilities, and resilience to attack. For spotting, its a faster, more agile and harder to detect/take out spotter than some current capabilities and less so than others. Same for kinetic engagement. Comms relay, OPDEC, EW, etc …

This is all very true, and I'm wondering how much detail we have to go into with regard to various electronic systems, because some are even just apparently using a sim card out of a phone

Level of detail for the game is not driven by the units fielded, and especially not their technology, but by the decision space for the players.

I send people. They go over hill. Look for prey. Look for coming enemies. Come back. Tell all.

My cavalry scouts ride ahead, stay hidden and ride back with reports.

Sir, we have this thing. It's like a wireless telephone. Our scouts can send back reports while they are on site.

and so on…

I could model the first situation in excruciating detail as the Neanderthals move around and come back. Maybe even model how well they can communicate. Cavalry with radios could just be resolved as a bonus to your initial charge/attack.

That's the level I like to tackle things with, factoring stuff into the rules so that they work 'in the background'

That is operationally how they work at the lowest command level. Somebody is a tactical operator, flying a drone (or more likely, several). The person right above them is not saying "go here" or "turn that way". They are saying "surveil objective delta" or "engage target alpha". That person's decision space is balancing assets against mission profiles, logistic support, and threat activity.

If you put drones on the board as physical models, as a player you would be making tactical decisions to move them, possibly executing some 6 DOF model math at the technical level. Of course, we do this in wargames as players. We claim to be a battalion commander or a general, then we do precise placement and engagement actions for individual companies.

For what you are talking about, I would recommend an area token type system. Have a set of mission tokens that represent the "center of the mission tasking area". They should be labeled with mission words like "survey", "Passive ESM", "patrol", "engage", etc. If you have multiple drones, you could put a color ring around them or label with "tail numbers".

Players get to lay down one mission token in an area as their drone command for the turn. For added realism, you can add a tasking stack of tokens – say, three tokens under the order token. You remove one at the start of every turn. If you give a new order with tasking tokens under the mission token, the number represents a penalty to your mission performance. This keeps players from jerking the drones around every which where all the time, but lets them do immediate response at a cost of operator performance, if critical.

A simple time/distance lets the active mission token to move from one mission token to another. When it reaches the token, start adding loiter tokens (up to a max) to represent the additional mission situational awareness for time spent on station.

Missions would have rules (possibly on reference cards) to adjudicate success based on mission token distance, time on station, and penalties. In an advanced game, the opponent would have counter drone orders that they kept secret until you adjudicate.

This approach is similar to the Tactical Hack deck of cards that allow you to overlap cyber effects on a tabletop wargame.

For a command level representation of drones, there's probably a middle ground variant of what I wrote above between the completely off the board cyber version, and the minis moving around at the tactical or sub-tactical level.

If you want to work through something, I'm game to discuss. It would require learning the rest of your rules and a lot of discussion about your intent for the feel of the game.

At the moment I'm soaking up ideas :-)

I'm coming to the conclusion that scale of the game is the determining factor. The bigger the game the more we have to factor stuff in.
At skirmish level then we can start getting into individual drones

If by skirmish, you mean combat where each individual person's actions are evaluated independently, than that approach will work. If individual position, facing, and combat capability is being adjudicated (as opposed to adjudicated as a group), then the parallel for drones would be individually positioned and ordered.

Of course, you could have a multi-level model with drones more abstract and individual combat at a higher level of granularity. We do this all the time. Take morale. You certainly could execute morale as an individually adjudicated, but often it is a group property even when combat is individual.

yes your definition of skirmish is close to mine ;-)

In that sort of game, the drone or the operator can be an individual. But for bigger games abstracting is the way to go

As a gross over simplification I'd suggest drones go a fair way to rectify the issue of wargamer's typically god-like view of the battlefield! May be the player without drones gets to shout orders from inside a wardrobe and squint at the table through the keyhole?

I wouldn't argue against abstraction, even below platoon level. There is definitely an explicit risk of designing effectively a game within a game. My tuppence based on observing Ukraine:

Drones are in many respects a species of off-table support and it might not be unreasonable to treat them as ultra-light weight air-support. I tend to view FPV drones and loitering munitions as sub-species of guided weapons (yes I know wrong on a couple of points but in terms of abstraction for a playable game okay IMO).

Jamming is again is probably some kind of off-table support but also possibly a double-edged sword.

Observation drones are probably task specific at the moment i.e. spotting for artillery, 'heavier' air support or other drones eg FPV. A fully networked battlespace is probably a case of the drones become just another unit for the player to push around and there is now nothing wrong with troops reacting to things on the other side of the table they couldn't possibly have knowledge of….

Platoon or lower level scout drones should probably be considered as some kind of one shot spotting bonus.

I love the plan for shouting orders from the wardrobe. I think that you're right about it helping the wargamers godlike view.

But yes, interesting points

Something I missed and that is, in the words of the internet defence meme community 'what air defence doing'. At sub-operational levels players probably aren't going to have control of their own GBAD assets, much beyond a MANPAD or two or may be a MG with appropriate mount. Again 'off table support' category IMO – though could be figured into the odds of a drone turning up. Odds of the support request being acted on should heavily be weighted on the situation and target. Doctrine and common sense are probably against a player persuading theatre air defence to take out a Wish.com quadcopter, assuming they can effectively target it, because it might be spotting for an opposing mortar team….

I think one of the problems at the moment for writing rules is we don't have a full picture of whats going on in Ukraine and how drones are used. Armenia took a thumping from drones earlier but I've not seen much detail reported on their use. Looking at the reporting drones are to some extent considered disposable specifically by Ukraine, so if you have drone support for your task it probably doesn't matter how many your opponent shoots down, and they seem to be a ubiquitous presence on the battlefield based on soldiers interviews – but there may be some bias there. The buzzy of the bringer of random hate is likely stick in the mind somewhat. I've also seen some suggestion that weather can affect deployment as well. Though this I would have thought would be more likely to impact cheaper ex-civilian drones rather than military versions with higher end imaging capabilities.

Well anyone writing rules for drone over the last year may need to do some updates…. because apparently they weren't scary enough already.

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